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No they will not learn in victory. In fact, victory is the worst thing that could happen to them. We need to mentally model the two parties this way:
- MAGA is just normal people who want something like the 90s back
- Democrats have an infinite reserve of far-left ideas, and the more electoral power they have, the deeper they will go into it.
Right now the Democrats are saved by Trump--everyone outside of MAGA hates him. So Trump balances out the craziness of the left. But in two years, he'll be gone. I don't think the left will be able to demonize Vance or Rubio as successfully.
It wasn't lockstep on NAFTA at all. Very lopsided Republican, and all of them still live in the Republican Party waiting for Trump to leave so they can continue sending jobs to Mexico and importing cheap labor.
I remember the NAFTA debates quite well. I was a secular libertarian-leaning Democrat back then. I wanted NAFTA to pass. Clinton went against his own party for NAFTA and there was a widespread sense that he'd betrayed the working class. So I'd say some of the roots of MAGA - seen in the tariffs - go back to NAFTA.
I grew up in Michigan and remember the unions hated it, but, in fairness, a ton of the jobs had already gone to the South. But I do think we hadn’t yet reckoned with the Jack Welch-ization of everything
Your article caught me as I was thinking about Ann Richard’s great take down of George Bush-“he was born on 3rd base but thinks he hit a triple”. My fear is that Trump has committed a three base error but they’ll think they hit triple.
"Democrats should remain humble in victory, recognize that they still have work to do to restore the public’s confidence in them, and stay focused on what’s important to the vast majority of Americans when they take power" I wont hold my breath. Both parties are terrible and hopefully this opens up a path for an independent who actually gives a sh*t about the American people and the constitution.
I rather see Trump as more of an independent than a conservative or Republican. His values are closer to my conservatism, but not nearly as much as I'd like.
I think most people do not fit nicely into one or the other party. The left has gone way too far with woke, trans, grean new deal, etc. The right is still too corporate and both parties seem to like war, big doners, AIPAC and insider trading.
Concur Janine. Both parties suck. The liberal woke suck the most.
None are for working people. I guess there is no money there so you can't win with no money. He who has the gold rules. Always has been always will be.
Ecclesiastes 9:11
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Perhaps the more pertinent question is, what lesson have Dems already learned? Biden won by campaigning as a moderate, only to govern as the most Progressive US president in history.
Dems seemed to have learned that lesson well, as many Red State Dems spent the entire campaign in Mitt Romney costumes, long before Halloween. They simply disavowed nearly every public policy, ever held in their adult lives.
In Texas, Talarico once labeled himself the most Progressive member of the Texas State legislature, ready to dismantle capitalism and fossil fuels to fight White Supremacy, while backing child gender surgery.
Now James claims to be a law and order, closed border, drill baby drill cheerleader, who would never allow trans girls in female school showers or athletic fields. Given another week, Talarico would have promised Texans 75 degree summers.
In Ohio, Amy Acton was the face of Covid Crazy, sure rural 4-H fairs would lead to the death of all mankind, while BLM Marches were perfectly safe. Now, instead of preaching the blessings of years long Covid lockdowns, and vaccinating Amish by force, Amy is the picture of Midwest moderation.
In Iowa and Kansas, Dems that once preached the sin of producing and/or consuming meat, now chomp on double burgers, chased with a slab of ribs, wrapped in bacon.
The moral of this story is many people, not just Dems, are likely to learn a multitude of lessons from this election. Most will involve campaign costumes.
America is surely a country overwhelmingly populated by idiots if the current price of gasoline is a major concern in deciding who to vote for. It's like selecting a dentist who tells you you don't have to have surgery to remove that rotting tooth instead of the one who tells you you will have to go through the discomfort of tooth extraction to avoid dying from the infection. In fact, the analogy is far more apt than I care to think about.
Normally I'd agree with you, Mr. Miller. I've always been frustrated that the price of gas or eggs or bread had so much greater electoral influence than governing philosophies or major policy platforms. However, that has always been because those prices were a terrible metric of presidential or party success due to their being largely outside control of the president or any single party.
That is not the case this election. The startlingly high rise in gas price isn't just about what we have to pay, it's about the unilateral decisions of the president, supported by his party, to risk these rises through a hastily planned war that was both illegal and a failure, and their inability to help the country escape the consequences ten months later. And when the President dismisses people's anger at a 60% rise in gas by crowing about oil company profits they're not wrong to look at him like a dentist -- the sort that only Jack Nicholson's masochist in "Little Shop of Horrors" could love (along with about 36.5% of recent poll respondents).
If you'll recall, Ms. Gorham, in 2020 Trump signed an agreement surrendering to the Taliban and called it a necessary conclusion, recognizing that after almost twenty years of fighting we had not succeeded. He blamed Obama and then Biden for sustaining his Trump's surrender focusing on the disastrous final day of withdrawal, rather than Bush for having deflected from defeating the Taliban and bin Laden to a war of choice in Iraq.
You can dress it up as necessary conclusion or call it a surrender, but yes: Trump made a foolish decision to start this war, managed it terribly, and has lost it. We are all paying for it every day and our Arab allies are paying far more despite not being parties to the war.
Multiple sources (including Tucker Carlson) claim that rather than surrender Trump is planning a nuclear strike on Iran. My belief is that if his unwillingness to acknowledge his mistake in Iran reaches that level he will completely isolate America and the punishment we will suffer in economic and diplomatic reprisals will be many times more costly. I hope the rumors of this nuclear plan are false.
Please don't quote Tucker Carlson, it makes you look unserious. You can blame the entire Iran mess on Trump if you want, but it's silly to call this a "necessary conclusion" when you mean surrender.
I'd quibble with one small but key argument, that the voters chose Biden in 202 because he was a more moderate candidate. Not only is there little evidence Biden represented any notion of moderation, as his own administration was quick to demonstrate, opening the southern border to refugees and immigrants without preparing to handle the inflows adequately, tacking left on social issues and the environment, it is contrary to the facts.
The Democrats ended the primaries after Biden won a meaningless victory in South Carolina, a state the party had zero hopes of ever contesting in the general election and one that did not represent a majority of delegates. Biden was shoehorned in as the nominee without the public getting a chance to choose. The public was robbed, cheated, the victory stolen.
It's worth noting Biden wasn't even the second choice in earlier Democratic primaries, finishing third and fourth. Biden was the "moderate" choice of the party establishment, not the voters, who were far wiser (not difficult admittedly) than the party elite.
The public wants effective administration and neither the Biden nor Trump administrations have met that bar, let alone cleared it. That's what tomorrow's elections will be about, getting a more effective oversight of the executive branch in place for the next two years, because the Republicans abandoned any attempts to check the president's power, even when he has acted unwisely or contrary to established norms and laws.
I was a Never Trumper back then (never say never I guess). I wanted Biden as a moderate. It seemed like the race was between Warren and Sanders, both radical leftists.
Biden’s presidency taught me something. There are no moderate democrats. Just the far left and Useful Idiots like me.
I believe that what we need is an intellectual basis for the limitation of the ideals that the Left claims to hold. The Left is a moral movement. The thing about religious moral movements is that they often have moderating forces. A supreme leader like the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Pope who can put his foot down. A core value like forgiveness. A doctrine like Separation of Church and State. Something a moderate member of the movement can point to to defend herself against charges of ideological impurity.
What moderating force does the diffuse secular moral movement we call the Left have?
The "moderating force" should be the majority of American voters. The problem is that there are too few centrists running for high offices (due to the nature of the primary election process) to give voters choices other than extremists.
Yeah, but in countries where there are several parties, one will “win” with 30% of the vote and then retire to the smoke-filled room to figure out which of the losing parties to coalition with. It’s better when we usually have a decent idea up front about what unholy amalgamation we are voting for.
Democrats can’t administer the lawful operation of a home health agency, so calls for Medicare for All are laughable. Let’s see a some good governance, rather than creating more millionaires criminals. It is beyond an embarrassment to see this massive fraud, it is an insult to good Democrats who want to see the needy receive services.
There is, as always with you, a lot of good food for thought here. Without treading too far into the treacherous 2020 waters, I don't agree that Biden won because he was perceived as moderate. He was a terrible candidate, coming in 3rd/4th in the first primaries, and had to be "saved" by Clyburn. If we could rerun that primary campaign, I would be interested to see who would prevail if Biden and another old guy who thought he was a savior had stayed out of the race. There was a lot of fresh, smart talent in that field. But that's all water under the bridge (or whatever the saying is).
On to the present:
On health care, as one who was a "leader board" on-the-ground canvasser in a purple to red area in 2018, it was interesting to see how this played out. Health insurance was the number 1 concern of a significant swath of voters in that area. Then the question was how to address it. Most D primary candidates faithfully repeated the "Medicare for All" slogan. (I'm fully in favor of single payer, and Medicare or Medicaid are both plausible bases on which such a system could be built. But the devil is in the details, and the Medicare for All mantra stopped discussion of that cold.) Two of the seven primary candidates did not go that route, but argued for alternatives such as a public option and strengthening the ACA. Those two were the top candidates. One of them prevailed and went on to beat R-John Faso. There are a lot of lessons to be learned—both ways—by examining how that played out in 2018.
On climate, as you know, in my view, this is a critically serious issue that absolutely needs to be top of the agenda, and that's true no matter what the polls say. The Democrats, if they prevail, need to give it strong focus, but they also do a much better job than they have done in making the case.
Indeed, "focus" is an important word here. As you state in closing, "Voters aren’t looking for sweeping, ideologically driven change so much as pragmatic, competent, and ethical governance that can help stabilize America’s democracy and address the economic struggles many people face." I agree in broad strokes, though I would offer a friendly amendment.
Much of the pragmatic, competent, ethical governance needed to stabilize our democracy and address the economic struggles people face will likely require sweeping change. Just as one example, Citizens United has completely warped our politics. It needs to be overturned by whatever means are available to Congress. And that's just for starters.
Thanks for the smart, thoughtful analysis. I only hope that the results tomorrow put the Democrats and allied independents in a position to begin the hard work that needs to be done.
From the phrase, "On to the present," I'm in very close alignment with your comment, Ms. Scheid. I agree that if the goal is universal healthcare coverage there are multiple paths that can be explored, and the simplistic slogan "Medicare for All" can seem like an all-or-nothing bet on a single path that may be functionally or politically suboptimal (or both). I agree with you rather than with Mr. Teixeira on the importance of addressing climate change as strongly as the political winds (or windmills) will allow. I agree on Citizens United, and I'd add that Democrats need to begin developing and opening discussions on ways to restore Congressional function and the three-branch checks-and-balances that are the distinguishing marks of the US system.
Looking backward (and this paragraph is just for the fun of it), I think your first paragraph conflates the issues of whether Biden was a moderate candidate and whether he was a strong candidate. At the time of the S.C. primary, Sanders was easily the strongest candidate, running far to the left, with Warren also viable on the left. Buttigieg was leading among moderates but had no prospects of building support among Black voters, which was precisely why S.C. loomed so large and why Clyburn had a kingmaker opening. Klobuchar probably had more long-run strength than Buttigieg at the center, but she had not ignited any enthusiasm, while Buttigieg had. Clyburn brought S.C. in for Biden on the basis of Biden's moderation (parallel to Clyburn's) and his greater credibility with the Black vote. (Harris and Booker had already withdrawn.) The fact that the two moderates, Buttigieg and Klobuchar, withdrew in favor of Biden within two days of the S.C primary is a metric of Biden's perception as a moderate and as the only moderate strong enough to challenge Sanders. I do agree with you that subtracting both Bernie and Biden might have allowed one of the younger candidates to blossom, especially since Harris and Booker would have remained in. On the other hand, Biden's deep alliances were critical in staving off the flood of money Steyer and Bloomberg brought to bear; it's hard to see who else could have so clearly withstood it.
Thanks for the thoughtful additional observations—and great points on Congressional function and the checks-and-balances issues. With regard to the 2020 candidates other than Biden, there were and are of course a lot of factors to weigh. One thing that gets overlooked (likely because it was not long-lived) was that at one point, Warren was leading the field—and had brought in a new cohort of suburban, largely female, voters that no one else had tapped this well. As I recall that period, and I acknowledge my memory on this may be frail, Sanders had had a heart attack and his poll numbers were starting to drop, but AOC then came to his rescue. Warren meanwhile, trying to balance her portion of the progressive base with the larger cohort of voters who were interested in her was tripped up by Medicare for All. Not sure that Steyer had much staying power, despite his cash, and Warren demolished Bloomberg’s chances in under one minute of debate time. I agree with your assessments of Buttigieg and Klobuchar.
Forgot all about the heart attack, but it was the previous October (Thanks, AI!). I think his recovery, both physical and political, was complete by spring. I was an admirer of Warren on policy and intelligence but dismayed by her mediocre public political skills beyond a very educated audience. But thank you for reminding me about the way she dispatched Bloomberg -- I had actually forgotten the NDA thing. She certainly had her moments!
All good points. I’ve now gone back to check, and the period I’m referring to was in fall, 2019. The key dates were:
Bernie’s heart-attack, 10/5/19
AOC endorsement of Bernie, 10/19/19
Warren had taken the lead—see the 10/14/19 Politico article, eg, “New poll has Warren leading Biden ahead of next Democratic debate”:
“Warren leads Biden 30 percent to 27 percent among Democratic voters and independents who lean Democratic, according to a Quinnipiac University poll published Monday. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is expected to return to the campaign trail after recovering from a recent heart attack, came in third with 11 percent. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg received 8 percent, while California Sen. Kamala Harris received 4 percent. No other candidate topped 2 percent in support.”
At the debate following this, on October, 15, 2019, as is to be expected since she was at that point the leading candidate, every other candidate hammered her, particularly on Medicare for All, which she was trying to dodge, so as to keep the more moderate wing of her base intact. She wasn’t able to do this.
She hung in until Big Tuesday, and dropped out of the race March 5, 2020.
While I definitely hear you on who her most ardent supporters were, I did watch her, for one, at a town hall in Oklahoma, definitely not the usual urban-suburban crowd. She engaged with them authentically, they recognized it, and some started to come her way. How durable is another question, but she had those skills.
She was also a brilliant story-teller. In every one of those big and bigger rallies she had, she was able to take a story from history, weave it into a larger historical lesson, and point it toward a concrete goal. She’d have the crowd, for example, raising their hands, showing two fingers, and shouting “Two cents! Two cents.”
To me, the ideal match up back then (and I recognize oh too well that the ideal is not the real) would have been Klobuchar-Warren.
Well, today is an entirely different story! May the Democrats win and then put their focus on serving the people!
Typically, people learn from defeats not victories. Last Democrat to do that was Bill Clinton. Of course, it is possible to learn the wrong lesson like Hillary Clinton.
"If that comes to pass, the party will face an important question: what lessons should it draw from its victory?"
Unfortunately, they won't learn that their ILliberal tendencies are dangerous and destructive. They will only double down. I say this as a lifelong liberal feminist who has put her ass on the line for civil liberties and human rights all her life.
The speech codes, the DEI debacle, the "transgender" lunacy -- all of it has pushed people away from the Democratic Party. If they win today, it's only because people are finally fed up with the abject authoritarian criminal that Trump is, but the Dems bear some responsibility for putting him in office in the first place.
The famous meme is entirely apt — Superimposed over the image of Elisabeth Moss as a red-clad handmaid from The Handmaid’s Tale, this text: “The American Left will put you in a prison cell with a rapist. The American Right will make you have his baby.”
As Richard said somewhere in the middle of these comments. Parties learn from defeats not victories. The best I hope for is somehow we begin siding with that European democratic country the KGB is trying to overrun. Otherwise 2 years of nothing.
Trump yesterday said instead of spraying agent orange in Vietnam we should have attacked "Ho Chi Minh City" otherwise known as Saigon at the time. For a draft dodger he doesn't seem to have been aware of who was who. Vance is already running and we can expect a lot more of it by the weekend.
No they will not learn in victory. In fact, victory is the worst thing that could happen to them. We need to mentally model the two parties this way:
- MAGA is just normal people who want something like the 90s back
- Democrats have an infinite reserve of far-left ideas, and the more electoral power they have, the deeper they will go into it.
Right now the Democrats are saved by Trump--everyone outside of MAGA hates him. So Trump balances out the craziness of the left. But in two years, he'll be gone. I don't think the left will be able to demonize Vance or Rubio as successfully.
MAGA beliefs were not normal in the 90s, the parties were, if anything pretty much in lockstep on a lot, including NAFTA
It wasn't lockstep on NAFTA at all. Very lopsided Republican, and all of them still live in the Republican Party waiting for Trump to leave so they can continue sending jobs to Mexico and importing cheap labor.
I remember the NAFTA debates quite well. I was a secular libertarian-leaning Democrat back then. I wanted NAFTA to pass. Clinton went against his own party for NAFTA and there was a widespread sense that he'd betrayed the working class. So I'd say some of the roots of MAGA - seen in the tariffs - go back to NAFTA.
I grew up in Michigan and remember the unions hated it, but, in fairness, a ton of the jobs had already gone to the South. But I do think we hadn’t yet reckoned with the Jack Welch-ization of everything
Jack Welch was a villain and caused so much harm, not just to jobs, but to the competitiveness of US industry.
Interesting, Elon Musk is the ant-Welch bringing back that in-house everything skunkworks mindset back.
Your article caught me as I was thinking about Ann Richard’s great take down of George Bush-“he was born on 3rd base but thinks he hit a triple”. My fear is that Trump has committed a three base error but they’ll think they hit triple.
"Democrats should remain humble in victory, recognize that they still have work to do to restore the public’s confidence in them, and stay focused on what’s important to the vast majority of Americans when they take power" I wont hold my breath. Both parties are terrible and hopefully this opens up a path for an independent who actually gives a sh*t about the American people and the constitution.
I rather see Trump as more of an independent than a conservative or Republican. His values are closer to my conservatism, but not nearly as much as I'd like.
I think most people do not fit nicely into one or the other party. The left has gone way too far with woke, trans, grean new deal, etc. The right is still too corporate and both parties seem to like war, big doners, AIPAC and insider trading.
Concur Janine. Both parties suck. The liberal woke suck the most.
None are for working people. I guess there is no money there so you can't win with no money. He who has the gold rules. Always has been always will be.
Ecclesiastes 9:11
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Big donors like unions, planned parenthood, Soros, etc.?
Perhaps the more pertinent question is, what lesson have Dems already learned? Biden won by campaigning as a moderate, only to govern as the most Progressive US president in history.
Dems seemed to have learned that lesson well, as many Red State Dems spent the entire campaign in Mitt Romney costumes, long before Halloween. They simply disavowed nearly every public policy, ever held in their adult lives.
In Texas, Talarico once labeled himself the most Progressive member of the Texas State legislature, ready to dismantle capitalism and fossil fuels to fight White Supremacy, while backing child gender surgery.
Now James claims to be a law and order, closed border, drill baby drill cheerleader, who would never allow trans girls in female school showers or athletic fields. Given another week, Talarico would have promised Texans 75 degree summers.
In Ohio, Amy Acton was the face of Covid Crazy, sure rural 4-H fairs would lead to the death of all mankind, while BLM Marches were perfectly safe. Now, instead of preaching the blessings of years long Covid lockdowns, and vaccinating Amish by force, Amy is the picture of Midwest moderation.
In Iowa and Kansas, Dems that once preached the sin of producing and/or consuming meat, now chomp on double burgers, chased with a slab of ribs, wrapped in bacon.
The moral of this story is many people, not just Dems, are likely to learn a multitude of lessons from this election. Most will involve campaign costumes.
America is surely a country overwhelmingly populated by idiots if the current price of gasoline is a major concern in deciding who to vote for. It's like selecting a dentist who tells you you don't have to have surgery to remove that rotting tooth instead of the one who tells you you will have to go through the discomfort of tooth extraction to avoid dying from the infection. In fact, the analogy is far more apt than I care to think about.
Normally I'd agree with you, Mr. Miller. I've always been frustrated that the price of gas or eggs or bread had so much greater electoral influence than governing philosophies or major policy platforms. However, that has always been because those prices were a terrible metric of presidential or party success due to their being largely outside control of the president or any single party.
That is not the case this election. The startlingly high rise in gas price isn't just about what we have to pay, it's about the unilateral decisions of the president, supported by his party, to risk these rises through a hastily planned war that was both illegal and a failure, and their inability to help the country escape the consequences ten months later. And when the President dismisses people's anger at a 60% rise in gas by crowing about oil company profits they're not wrong to look at him like a dentist -- the sort that only Jack Nicholson's masochist in "Little Shop of Horrors" could love (along with about 36.5% of recent poll respondents).
So policy change number 1 is to surrender to Iran?
If you'll recall, Ms. Gorham, in 2020 Trump signed an agreement surrendering to the Taliban and called it a necessary conclusion, recognizing that after almost twenty years of fighting we had not succeeded. He blamed Obama and then Biden for sustaining his Trump's surrender focusing on the disastrous final day of withdrawal, rather than Bush for having deflected from defeating the Taliban and bin Laden to a war of choice in Iraq.
You can dress it up as necessary conclusion or call it a surrender, but yes: Trump made a foolish decision to start this war, managed it terribly, and has lost it. We are all paying for it every day and our Arab allies are paying far more despite not being parties to the war.
Multiple sources (including Tucker Carlson) claim that rather than surrender Trump is planning a nuclear strike on Iran. My belief is that if his unwillingness to acknowledge his mistake in Iran reaches that level he will completely isolate America and the punishment we will suffer in economic and diplomatic reprisals will be many times more costly. I hope the rumors of this nuclear plan are false.
Please don't quote Tucker Carlson, it makes you look unserious. You can blame the entire Iran mess on Trump if you want, but it's silly to call this a "necessary conclusion" when you mean surrender.
I'd quibble with one small but key argument, that the voters chose Biden in 202 because he was a more moderate candidate. Not only is there little evidence Biden represented any notion of moderation, as his own administration was quick to demonstrate, opening the southern border to refugees and immigrants without preparing to handle the inflows adequately, tacking left on social issues and the environment, it is contrary to the facts.
The Democrats ended the primaries after Biden won a meaningless victory in South Carolina, a state the party had zero hopes of ever contesting in the general election and one that did not represent a majority of delegates. Biden was shoehorned in as the nominee without the public getting a chance to choose. The public was robbed, cheated, the victory stolen.
It's worth noting Biden wasn't even the second choice in earlier Democratic primaries, finishing third and fourth. Biden was the "moderate" choice of the party establishment, not the voters, who were far wiser (not difficult admittedly) than the party elite.
The public wants effective administration and neither the Biden nor Trump administrations have met that bar, let alone cleared it. That's what tomorrow's elections will be about, getting a more effective oversight of the executive branch in place for the next two years, because the Republicans abandoned any attempts to check the president's power, even when he has acted unwisely or contrary to established norms and laws.
I was a Never Trumper back then (never say never I guess). I wanted Biden as a moderate. It seemed like the race was between Warren and Sanders, both radical leftists.
Biden’s presidency taught me something. There are no moderate democrats. Just the far left and Useful Idiots like me.
Unfortunately, JMan true. The liberal woke took the party with Obama presidency. Still in the background waiting for their chance again.
I believe that what we need is an intellectual basis for the limitation of the ideals that the Left claims to hold. The Left is a moral movement. The thing about religious moral movements is that they often have moderating forces. A supreme leader like the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Pope who can put his foot down. A core value like forgiveness. A doctrine like Separation of Church and State. Something a moderate member of the movement can point to to defend herself against charges of ideological impurity.
What moderating force does the diffuse secular moral movement we call the Left have?
The "moderating force" should be the majority of American voters. The problem is that there are too few centrists running for high offices (due to the nature of the primary election process) to give voters choices other than extremists.
The problem being that with only two parties messages from voters too easily get lost in the noise.
Yeah, but in countries where there are several parties, one will “win” with 30% of the vote and then retire to the smoke-filled room to figure out which of the losing parties to coalition with. It’s better when we usually have a decent idea up front about what unholy amalgamation we are voting for.
I didn't mean that my suggested solution was multiple parties.
When a former president goes to bat for a terrorist sympathizer, there is nothing any democrat could do that would get my vote. Ever.
They will learn that the path to victory is standing with the radical leftists no matter what. And that will be the wrong lesson.
Perhaps a thought about the deep disappointment many feel of the Democrats failure to operate government programs for the needy in Minnesota and Maine for the benefit of those in need, rather than so the fraudsters to could buy houses, cars, or fund a campaign for President of Jubaland in Somalia. https://www.mainepublic.org/politics/2024-09-09/somali-mainer-returns-to-east-africa-to-run-for-regional-president-of-his-former-state. The business founder has left the country amidst fraud allegations by a whistle blower. https://www.themainewire.com/2026/09/womp-womp-somali-refugee-accused-of-mainecare-fraud-loses-1-million-home-after-tax-liens/. Where is the oversight by the Democrat governors?
Democrats can’t administer the lawful operation of a home health agency, so calls for Medicare for All are laughable. Let’s see a some good governance, rather than creating more millionaires criminals. It is beyond an embarrassment to see this massive fraud, it is an insult to good Democrats who want to see the needy receive services.
Tallyrand's statement about the Bourbons could be applied to the Democrats: "They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing".
There is, as always with you, a lot of good food for thought here. Without treading too far into the treacherous 2020 waters, I don't agree that Biden won because he was perceived as moderate. He was a terrible candidate, coming in 3rd/4th in the first primaries, and had to be "saved" by Clyburn. If we could rerun that primary campaign, I would be interested to see who would prevail if Biden and another old guy who thought he was a savior had stayed out of the race. There was a lot of fresh, smart talent in that field. But that's all water under the bridge (or whatever the saying is).
On to the present:
On health care, as one who was a "leader board" on-the-ground canvasser in a purple to red area in 2018, it was interesting to see how this played out. Health insurance was the number 1 concern of a significant swath of voters in that area. Then the question was how to address it. Most D primary candidates faithfully repeated the "Medicare for All" slogan. (I'm fully in favor of single payer, and Medicare or Medicaid are both plausible bases on which such a system could be built. But the devil is in the details, and the Medicare for All mantra stopped discussion of that cold.) Two of the seven primary candidates did not go that route, but argued for alternatives such as a public option and strengthening the ACA. Those two were the top candidates. One of them prevailed and went on to beat R-John Faso. There are a lot of lessons to be learned—both ways—by examining how that played out in 2018.
On climate, as you know, in my view, this is a critically serious issue that absolutely needs to be top of the agenda, and that's true no matter what the polls say. The Democrats, if they prevail, need to give it strong focus, but they also do a much better job than they have done in making the case.
Indeed, "focus" is an important word here. As you state in closing, "Voters aren’t looking for sweeping, ideologically driven change so much as pragmatic, competent, and ethical governance that can help stabilize America’s democracy and address the economic struggles many people face." I agree in broad strokes, though I would offer a friendly amendment.
Much of the pragmatic, competent, ethical governance needed to stabilize our democracy and address the economic struggles people face will likely require sweeping change. Just as one example, Citizens United has completely warped our politics. It needs to be overturned by whatever means are available to Congress. And that's just for starters.
Thanks for the smart, thoughtful analysis. I only hope that the results tomorrow put the Democrats and allied independents in a position to begin the hard work that needs to be done.
From the phrase, "On to the present," I'm in very close alignment with your comment, Ms. Scheid. I agree that if the goal is universal healthcare coverage there are multiple paths that can be explored, and the simplistic slogan "Medicare for All" can seem like an all-or-nothing bet on a single path that may be functionally or politically suboptimal (or both). I agree with you rather than with Mr. Teixeira on the importance of addressing climate change as strongly as the political winds (or windmills) will allow. I agree on Citizens United, and I'd add that Democrats need to begin developing and opening discussions on ways to restore Congressional function and the three-branch checks-and-balances that are the distinguishing marks of the US system.
Looking backward (and this paragraph is just for the fun of it), I think your first paragraph conflates the issues of whether Biden was a moderate candidate and whether he was a strong candidate. At the time of the S.C. primary, Sanders was easily the strongest candidate, running far to the left, with Warren also viable on the left. Buttigieg was leading among moderates but had no prospects of building support among Black voters, which was precisely why S.C. loomed so large and why Clyburn had a kingmaker opening. Klobuchar probably had more long-run strength than Buttigieg at the center, but she had not ignited any enthusiasm, while Buttigieg had. Clyburn brought S.C. in for Biden on the basis of Biden's moderation (parallel to Clyburn's) and his greater credibility with the Black vote. (Harris and Booker had already withdrawn.) The fact that the two moderates, Buttigieg and Klobuchar, withdrew in favor of Biden within two days of the S.C primary is a metric of Biden's perception as a moderate and as the only moderate strong enough to challenge Sanders. I do agree with you that subtracting both Bernie and Biden might have allowed one of the younger candidates to blossom, especially since Harris and Booker would have remained in. On the other hand, Biden's deep alliances were critical in staving off the flood of money Steyer and Bloomberg brought to bear; it's hard to see who else could have so clearly withstood it.
Thanks for the thoughtful additional observations—and great points on Congressional function and the checks-and-balances issues. With regard to the 2020 candidates other than Biden, there were and are of course a lot of factors to weigh. One thing that gets overlooked (likely because it was not long-lived) was that at one point, Warren was leading the field—and had brought in a new cohort of suburban, largely female, voters that no one else had tapped this well. As I recall that period, and I acknowledge my memory on this may be frail, Sanders had had a heart attack and his poll numbers were starting to drop, but AOC then came to his rescue. Warren meanwhile, trying to balance her portion of the progressive base with the larger cohort of voters who were interested in her was tripped up by Medicare for All. Not sure that Steyer had much staying power, despite his cash, and Warren demolished Bloomberg’s chances in under one minute of debate time. I agree with your assessments of Buttigieg and Klobuchar.
Forgot all about the heart attack, but it was the previous October (Thanks, AI!). I think his recovery, both physical and political, was complete by spring. I was an admirer of Warren on policy and intelligence but dismayed by her mediocre public political skills beyond a very educated audience. But thank you for reminding me about the way she dispatched Bloomberg -- I had actually forgotten the NDA thing. She certainly had her moments!
All good points. I’ve now gone back to check, and the period I’m referring to was in fall, 2019. The key dates were:
Bernie’s heart-attack, 10/5/19
AOC endorsement of Bernie, 10/19/19
Warren had taken the lead—see the 10/14/19 Politico article, eg, “New poll has Warren leading Biden ahead of next Democratic debate”:
“Warren leads Biden 30 percent to 27 percent among Democratic voters and independents who lean Democratic, according to a Quinnipiac University poll published Monday. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is expected to return to the campaign trail after recovering from a recent heart attack, came in third with 11 percent. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg received 8 percent, while California Sen. Kamala Harris received 4 percent. No other candidate topped 2 percent in support.”
At the debate following this, on October, 15, 2019, as is to be expected since she was at that point the leading candidate, every other candidate hammered her, particularly on Medicare for All, which she was trying to dodge, so as to keep the more moderate wing of her base intact. She wasn’t able to do this.
She hung in until Big Tuesday, and dropped out of the race March 5, 2020.
While I definitely hear you on who her most ardent supporters were, I did watch her, for one, at a town hall in Oklahoma, definitely not the usual urban-suburban crowd. She engaged with them authentically, they recognized it, and some started to come her way. How durable is another question, but she had those skills.
She was also a brilliant story-teller. In every one of those big and bigger rallies she had, she was able to take a story from history, weave it into a larger historical lesson, and point it toward a concrete goal. She’d have the crowd, for example, raising their hands, showing two fingers, and shouting “Two cents! Two cents.”
To me, the ideal match up back then (and I recognize oh too well that the ideal is not the real) would have been Klobuchar-Warren.
Well, today is an entirely different story! May the Democrats win and then put their focus on serving the people!
Typically, people learn from defeats not victories. Last Democrat to do that was Bill Clinton. Of course, it is possible to learn the wrong lesson like Hillary Clinton.
I wouldn't say Bill learned the right lessons from defeat. Sucky health care got pushed off 20 years and he signed NAFTA.
He did collaborate with Gingrich and NAFTA was negotiated by Bush 1
"If that comes to pass, the party will face an important question: what lessons should it draw from its victory?"
Unfortunately, they won't learn that their ILliberal tendencies are dangerous and destructive. They will only double down. I say this as a lifelong liberal feminist who has put her ass on the line for civil liberties and human rights all her life.
The speech codes, the DEI debacle, the "transgender" lunacy -- all of it has pushed people away from the Democratic Party. If they win today, it's only because people are finally fed up with the abject authoritarian criminal that Trump is, but the Dems bear some responsibility for putting him in office in the first place.
The famous meme is entirely apt — Superimposed over the image of Elisabeth Moss as a red-clad handmaid from The Handmaid’s Tale, this text: “The American Left will put you in a prison cell with a rapist. The American Right will make you have his baby.”
Victory? The elections are not over.
As Richard said somewhere in the middle of these comments. Parties learn from defeats not victories. The best I hope for is somehow we begin siding with that European democratic country the KGB is trying to overrun. Otherwise 2 years of nothing.
Trump yesterday said instead of spraying agent orange in Vietnam we should have attacked "Ho Chi Minh City" otherwise known as Saigon at the time. For a draft dodger he doesn't seem to have been aware of who was who. Vance is already running and we can expect a lot more of it by the weekend.